Care worker kidnapped in Kabul

2005-05-16 21:11

Kabul - Armed men kidnapped an Italian woman working for a US-based relief agency in the centre of the Afghan capital on Monday, officials said.

Four men forced the woman into a car in Kabul's Shahr-e-Naw district at about 21:00 (16:30 GMT), said General Mahboubullah Amiri, a senior official in the Afghan interior ministry.

The woman worked for Care International, said Paul Barker, the agency's director in Afghanistan.

"Four men carrying Kalashnikovs bashed in the window of her car and took her away. They told the driver not to move or he would be shot," Barker said.

He declined to give the woman's name.

Barker said the car had just dropped off another female employee when the abduction happened. He said no demands had been made for her release.

Carlo Batori, an Italian diplomat in Kabul, confirmed the woman was an Italian citizen, but gave no details.

In Rome, the Italian foreign ministry said a crisis unit which has handled past abductions of Italians abroad was working on the case, and that foreign minister Gianfranco Fini was following the situation.

Ministry officials said they had no immediately information, including the woman's age and what she did for Care. They declined to identify her.

In downtown Kabul, police were stopping almost every car passing major junctions, checking the trunks and under the seats. Patrol cars with flashing emergency lights were moving slowly through the side streets.

There were no signs of activity at the Care office, which is located in the district, and vendors said they had seen no sign of an incident.

The abduction follows a string of warnings to the roughly 3 000 foreigners living in Kabul that they could be targeted in attacks, including kidnappings.

Kabul had been largely free of the fear of the kind of kidnappings rife in Iraq until October last year, when three UN election workers were seized at gunpoint in the city.

They were released unharmed a month later.

Margaret Hassan, the British director of Care International in Iraq, was kidnapped in Baghdad in October last year and believed killed although no body was recovered.

Her fate caused shock and anger in Iraq where she had lived for 30 years and was renowned for her work distributing food, medicine and supplies to Iraqis suffering under the sanctions of the 1990s.

- AP